U.S. working group concluded in 2006 that comfort women forced into sexual slavery
Updated: 2014-03-26 03:46:06 KST

This is a report published in 2006 by the National Archives and Records Administration on behalf of the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group.
Titled "Researching Japanese War Crimes," the 222-page report was made after scouring 8.five million pages of records related to Japanese and Nazi war crimes previously identified by the U.S. government.
Included in the report is a description of how the Japanese military contracted private vendors to set up so-called "comfort stations" for its troops dating back to as early as 1932.
The work began in 2000, when Samuel Berger, then National Security Adviser to President Bill Clinton, directed agencies to locate classified records on war crimes committed by agents of the Japanese government from 1931 to 1945.
The working group reportedly advised U.S. agencies to pay particular attention to any records and materials related to the "'comfort women' program."
"Comfort women" is a term that refers to women and girls forced by the Japanese military to work as prostitutes during World War Two.

The group sent their findings on to the U.S. Congress in April 2007.
Local experts in Korea predict the latest findings may work against the current administration of Shinzo Abe in Japan, which has long been denying that the comfort women system involved coercion.
Sohn Jung-in, Arirang News.